Carter quits Baptists in row over role of women

By Philip Delves Broughton in New York

12:00AM BST 24 Oct 2000

JIMMY CARTER, the former president, left America's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, yesterday in disgust at what he called its "rigid" interpretation of the Bible on the role of women.

He accused the organisation of being taken over by traditionalists and adopting untenable positions such as opposition to women pastors and arguing that women should be submissive to their husbands.

Announcing his decision, Mr Carter said: "My grandfather, my father and I have always been Southern Baptist . . . this is a torturous decision to make. I do it with anguish and not with any pleasure."

As president from 1976 to 1980, Mr Carter introduced evangelical Christianity to America's political mainstream. His deep faith has helped make him one of the most popular former presidents in history.

In a letter to 75,000 fellow Baptists sent out yesterday, Mr Carter wrote that the "increasingly rigid" doctrines handed down by the Southern Baptist Convention's hierarchy violated "the basic premises of my Christian faith".